DI Press: Pros, Cons

[jotterpinky]

We're a small shop with a two color press and a handful of digital devices. All 4 color jobs over 1000 press sheets we usually outsource to a trade printer in another state. We're currently seeing 1-2 jobs per week that are between 5K-10000 pieces that we're outsourcing plus a number of smaller ones (1K-5K). My boss has approached me about possibly printing them in house if we purchased a 4-color press. My response has been that we would need more volume. However we do see some growth in this area and being able to turn jobs more quickly locally could bring in extra volume.

We are at the beginning stages of investigating 4-color presses and feel that the price point on a DI press is very attractive. However, this being said I realize that there is some negativity from the printing community regarding this type of device. Can anyone who has run DI presses (please let me know the approximate year(s) of the devices) versus standard tower presses chime in here and give me some feedback on these devices. I'm not interested in anecdotal information, merely a straight no-nonsense idea as to what the pros and cons are of purchasing such a device.

Specifically
1. Expected life in # of impressions on a well kept machine
2. Print Quality vs traditional offset tower presses. I realize this will probably be dependent on the year the press was made but let me know pitfalls or benefits with older/newer model years.
3. Cost of consumables. - this is one area that I've heard rumors that the vendor rapes you.
4. Ease of operation. How well trained do you really need to be. Could our two color pressman operate this with a week of training?
5. Do you feel an aqueous coater is a big benefit and if so why?
6. If you had the choice would you go with the 52cm "Landscape" press vs. the 34cm" portrait press and why? - this could be applied to any press technology not just the DI, I'm interested in why they offer the different orientation and it's benefits.
7. With regard to print quality, how does the DI do on solids and gradients compared to traditional presses?
8. Regarding older versions of DI presses such as the Heidelberg QMDI etc. are there certain achilles heels, or drawbacks to the different models i.e. Pro, Plus, Classic as well as other brands such as Ryobi, Kodak, Xerox or Presstek that we should be aware of in making our decision?

If you would be against purchasing a DI press, what would you recommend instead given our situation?

By the way the other press we're interested in is the KBA Genius UV which would also upgrade our capabilities to run plastics and other synthetics easily opening up a new market for us. Rather than post another thread right now does anyone have experience running these, and if so what are their pros and cons?

 

[Disappointed]

We're a small shop with a two color press and a handful of digital devices. All 4 color jobs over 1000 press sheets we usually outsource to a trade printer in another state. We're currently seeing 1-2 jobs per week that are between 5K-10000 pieces that we're outsourcing plus a number of smaller ones (1K-5K). My boss has approached me about possibly printing them in house if we purchased a 4-color press. My response has been that we would need more volume. However we do see some growth in this area and being able to turn jobs more quickly locally could bring in extra volume.

We are at the beginning stages of investigating 4-color presses and feel that the price point on a DI press is very attractive. However, this being said I realize that there is some negativity from the printing community regarding this type of device. Can anyone who has run DI presses (please let me know the approximate year(s) of the devices) versus standard tower presses chime in here and give me some feedback on these devices. I'm not interested in anecdotal information, merely a straight no-nonsense idea as to what the pros and cons are of purchasing such a device.

Specifically
1. Expected life in # of impressions on a well kept machine
2. Print Quality vs traditional offset tower presses. I realize this will probably be dependent on the year the press was made but let me know pitfalls or benefits with older/newer model years.
3. Cost of consumables. - this is one area that I've heard rumors that the vendor rapes you.
4. Ease of operation. How well trained do you really need to be. Could our two color pressman operate this with a week of training?
5. Do you feel an aqueous coater is a big benefit and if so why?
6. If you had the choice would you go with the 52cm "Landscape" press vs. the 34cm" portrait press and why? - this could be applied to any press technology not just the DI, I'm interested in why they offer the different orientation and it's benefits.
7. With regard to print quality, how does the DI do on solids and gradients compared to traditional presses?
8. Regarding older versions of DI presses such as the Heidelberg QMDI etc. are there certain achilles heels, or drawbacks to the different models i.e. Pro, Plus, Classic as well as other brands such as Ryobi, Kodak, Xerox or Presstek that we should be aware of in making our decision?

If you would be against purchasing a DI press, what would you recommend instead given our situation?

By the way the other press we're interested in is the KBA Genius UV which would also upgrade our capabilities to run plastics and other synthetics easily opening up a new market for us. Rather than post another thread right now does anyone have experience running these, and if so what are their pros and cons?

Go for it!

I run a Presstek 52di after upgrading from a 34.

We have done 15m impressions in three years, not much but we are only an inplant house. The print quality is amazing, we moved up from a b2 komori and the 300lpi screen is amazing. The only downside I can see is that you have to be careful with cleaning, care and maintenance. Slack on any one of these and it will bite you hard, get a maintenance contract.

If well looked after, they are a doddle to use, a two colour operator will be ok given a bit of training provided he is willing to learn and not a technophobe.

The solid quality can not be beaten IMHO, for a small press it can put more ink on a sheet than any other I have seen! Plate costs are comparable to metal but the only thing is you can't store and re-them.

Aqueous coated could be good for instant turnaround, we don't have it and I can still flip a run over within 20-30 mins. I would not dream of going back to conventional presses now, not having any water in the system is a massive bonus, no scum, no streaking, no banding, instant colour. I can get a job on the run and to good colour within 100 sheets easy, sometimes less than 30!

To be that good though you have to look after it well, treat it well and it will perform, startup in the morning is 20 mins and shutdown is at night is 20 mins, Friday cleanup is 2 hours or so.

It's a great press and can turn round jobs at a frightening pace!

Dave

BTW, we only work weekdays and 7-1/2hour day, so our output is lower than commercial shops, but our need for stringent colour accuracy is higher, we print to ISO standards.

 

[Green Printer]

Disappointed what are the requirements for pressroom temperature?

 

[mightyandy]

We currently do all our printing on a 1997 QMDI classic and we are delighted.
The quality of the plate making it outstanding. The work we are producing looks excellent and is very comparible to any other 4 colour printer.

There are of course limitations for example as you mentioned its portrait press:

34cm vs 52cm (This is applicable to all types presses not just DI.)
The main difference is roller power. (both will have the same diameter rollers)
For example if I was printing on SRA3 paper (450mm X 320mm) forgetting about colour bars if we wanted to print the max size image our artwork would be aprox 440mm in length.
However if I wanted to print the same artwork on a landscape press the same diameter rollers would only have to produce an image 310mm in length.
The 52cm press will obviously find it alot easier to produce large solids as you are printing a far shorter page length (under 3/4s).

Registration
Next thing I can think of is registration. if a page was skewed going into the press this will be more exaggerated the greater the length of the sheet.

At this point I'd like to point out we produce excellent registration and are extremly happy with the work we are outputting,
but you asked the advantages of a landscape press.

We are delighted with our QMDI and we believe bringing our colour litho in house was the best move we ever made.

We had only ever printed on single colour presses and hand printed process work on them a handful of times and found the transition moving to the DI reasonably painless. In alot of ways they are alot easier to run (Ink keys set reasonably well automatically, no need to worry about water level, fount solution or PH balance.
However when it came to colour correction we were clueless, it was a big learning curve but thankfully the colour profiles the press produced were spot on most of the time.

My opinion for what its worth,
We would love a presstek we looked longingly at them in Ipex, in some ways they are the most impressive press I have ever seen, however if we had the funds to buy a presstek right now we'd buy several more QMDI's they have depreciated in value an incredible amount, the print quality is excellent and they are very compact.

 

[Disappointed]

Our 52di is in a smallish room with the strip hanging doors, it seems perfecty happy at 21-22c and it's very comfortable for the operator at that temperature too.

The press runs at 18-19c on the chiller which is placed outside the room as it gives off a lot of heat.

As I said, we went from a 34 to 52cm press, while the 34 could roll some commendable solids, it did have slight banding on a heavy job. The 52 also gives more speed. The 34 is best placed for very short runs, it's happiest at 6000/hr. The 52 will, and has run at 9000/hr all day when needed, I normally run at 6-7000/hr though.

Plate life is around 20-25,000 sheets matbe more on simple jobs.

With machines like the 52di around, I can't see why anyone would want to struggle with water damping systems anymore, I know the press is not cheap but it's throughput will mean good payback times. Mechanically it's built very heavily, the engineering is excellent inside. It's also clean to operate, I can easily go home without having to scrub ink off my hands, compared to the old days of hand washing blankets etc.

Job turnaround is 15 minutes unless paper size needs changing when it goes up to all of 18mins

Dave

 

[Green Printer]

Do yoau experience any trouble when the temperature of the room gets up to 30c.

 

[Disappointed]

Do you experience any trouble when the temperature of the room gets up to 30c.

I would not know from experience but i can only guess that it would not be too happy at that temperature! I don't think the operator would be either.

Most Di's are happy in a clean and controlled environment, especially if you want minimum hassle and maximum quality work.

In England that's pretty easy as we don't see extreme temps outside, mostly cloudy or raining

I do know that the 52Di is much more stable than the 34Di, its a different animal altogether.

 

[bhm8hwcm]

We run a Presstek 34DI-X model.

We have been running the press for about 3 years now and overall I am quite happy.

I am not a pressman but I became the main operator after not being able to find one initially. I do have extensive experience in the industry and understand colour so I became quite proficient and then trained a 2 colour small press operator how to run the press.

I would get the PDSE if you can as this helps I believe if you are trying to run pretty precise colour which we do. We do not eyeball things as I want consistency and so the PDSE helps in this regard.

Ink coverage is great on the press and so is overall print quality with being able to print at 300lpi.

We do have our press in a room which does have some benefits as we try to keep temperature and humidity controlled. Our temperatures do get up there in the summer though and if you have a long job that you are running at 7000 sph then even the 2 air conditioners sometimes have a bit of a hard time keeping up. Consistency in temp is important as changes will affect the inking I find quite a bit.

A landscape press would have been nice but it was out of our budget at the time. With a landscape press I would think getting ink settled down would be a little easier when it comes to running job with heavy ink coverage or inconsistent ink across the sheet. Another issue with portrait is doubling which we sometimes struggle with when running 80# gloss with uneven coverage across the sheet or heavier coverage.

I find the consumables to be a little high but if you have to factor in a platesetter then cost may even out...I think it depends on how many jobs you would run per day. If I do decide to buy another press then this would be something I would have to look hard at.

Overall quite happy though.

 

[Disappointed]

I forgot to mention that:- definately get the PDSE option, I would not want to try and run colour without a measurement device attached.

We currently pay around £20 for a set of four plates, I think it's pretty reasonable.

There are the blanket wipes and plate wipe rolls too but they do last a fair time and when offset against the cost of manual blanket cleaning cloths and spirit etc, they too are pretty good.


Dave